VOLUME 4, ISSUE 6
Integrated Pest Management
April, 2014
Pests are small organism that damage or interfere with desirable plants in fields,
orchards, wild lands or homes. Pest can be a plant (weed), vertebrate (bird, rat, or
other mammals) invertebrate (insect, tick mite or snail), pathogen (bacteria, virus, or
fungus) that cause disease in plants and other ecosystem.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM), How does it help?
Rural Entrepreneurship &
Business Development Update
ALABAMA A&M UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, LIFE AND NATURAL SCIENCES
Knowing your pest is most important in IPM. If you treat for the wrong pest, you
waste time, money and crop. IPM helps to identify pests on the crops in the field.
Careful observation is carried out for twice a week.
Things need to be know to practice IPM:
Which pests can affect the crop?
Different pests attacks different crops.
For example: Leaf miners attacks tomatoes, cucumber
beetles attacks cucumbers.
How do they look like?
This include several stages of pests like eggs, larva,
pupa and adult.
What kind of damage they can cause?
Insect pests can damage vegetables
in several
different ways. For example tomato fruit
worms, stink bugs and pickle worms
cause direct damage by
feeding on fruit. Some insects damage vegetables by sucking plant juices from leaves,
stems, or roots and leads to poor plant growth.
When and how should you watch for them?
Carefully observe your field at different points
to find out pests in your crops.
Proper sampling quickly tells you both what and
how many. Number of pests in the crop tells
you to act or not. If number is more than follow
to the next step.
What can you do to avoid them?
Prevent pests by practicing good sanitation, eliminating crops that can host pests and
build good soil.
Avoid pests by changing time of planting or practice rotation crops to break pest life
cycles.
Observe pest population, weather and
nutrient to make sound treatment decisions.
Suppress pests by using cultural,
physical, biological, or chemical
parasites (one organism lives inside of other organism), pathogens and competitors.
Cultural controls:
Creating hedges around the fields controls
the pest population on crops. Growing trap
crops around the field will attract insects
and decrease their population in the main
fields.
Mechanical and physical controls:
Mechanically pests are controlled b killing them directly or making environment unsuitable to fit it. Physical controls such as using mulches to control
weeds , sterilizing soils with steam to control
diseases.
Chemical control:
Pests are chemically controlled by using pesticides. In IPM. Pesticides are
used only when it is needed.
Benefits of IPM:
Protecting soil health from unwanted pesticides by using several pest
management methods.
Providing safe supply of agricultural products.
Preventing the loss of soil , water and air quality.
Safeguarding the health of agricultural workers and their families.
Small Farms Research Center, Alabama A&M University
4900 Meridian Street
James I. Dawson Building, Room 219
Normal, AL
35762
Small Farms Research Center Background. The Small Farms Research Center was developed to assist small farmers with limited resources in Alabama’s underserved communities. The center was first
developed in 2000 to assist minorities, especially women, African
Americans and underserved individuals improve their farm management practices, given ones condition and resources. The mission of
the Center and the Small Farmers Outreach program is to assist all
small and limited resources farms effectively deal with risk management and food safety issues and provide them with informational sessions. The Center has also expanded its outreach efforts to meet the
needs of entrepreneurs and businessman. The center is located at Alabama A&M University in the Dawson Building. The center specializes
in following areas
Marketing and Business Plans
-Record keeping and Loan Application
-Identify alternative enterprises
-Personal Management
-Legal Issues
-Finances
-International Business and Procurement
-Accounting Issues
-Taxes
-Business Development
-Conducting seminars on Government programs and other issues
For more information about us give us a call at (256) 372-4970 and
1-866-858-4970.
Website: www.aamu.edu/smallfarmers